Chalbury Hillfort has had this name, with little change, for centuries. The earliest reference we have found is 1435, referring to a pasture called Cherlebury. A number of late 17thC references call it Charlbrow. The earliest reference found that drops the "r" (from Charl- to Chal-) is the 1838 Tithe Survey, which refers to the house at what is now Chalbury Corner as Chalbury Lodge, but confusingly calls the hill Chalk Brow. By the 1888 Ordnance Survey map, the modern spelling is fully in use both for the house and the hill.

The English Place-name Society suggest "ceorl's burh", meaning encampment of the peasants, as the derivation.

The very distinctive and unusual name Jordan is now used for the river that flows from Sutton Poyntz (or from Osmington) through Preston to the sea at Bowleaze. It also refers to the hill by the sea to the west of the river, and to the farm that used to occupy that hill and land around, with a farmhouse on the Preston Road between Overcombe Corner and Chalbury Corner. The modern name (or slight variations such as Jorden, Jourdan or Jourdaine) seems to have been well established by 1650. However some older references, between 1336 and 1452, show up its origin, by referring to the hill as Churdon or Cherdon. The meaning of this, according to Mills, is either "hill by a bend [i.e. in the river]" or "hill by the river Chur". If the latter is true, then it reveals the much older name of the river. Chur, derived from a Saxon word meaning stony or pebbly, has the same derivation as the Cerne river and the Char.

The process whereby the origin of a name is forgotten and it is simplified to something more familiar (i.e. Jordan) is known as "folk etymology". The process whereby a name referring to one feature (the hill in this case) is applied to a different feature (the river) is called "back formation". In this case the net result is that the name "River Jordan" probably actually means "River by the hill by the river Chur".

This name has been preserved in the form of a cul de sac off the Preston Road, just to the west of its junction with Sutton Road. The name is known from documents c1800, including the Inclosure Report and the Tithe Survey, where a large area bounded by Preston Road on the south, Coombe Valley Road on the west, Seven Acres Road on the east is shown as Lower Mawdy Wall Furlong. This means that the road now bearing its name is actually outside the historical area known as Mawdy Wall Furlong. The earlier documents refer to two separate areas as Mawdy Wall Furlong and Lower Mawdy Wall Furlong.

The Tithe Survey transcription has Marley for Mawdy, clearly a mistake (modern or old). This mistake appears to have been perpetuated via the naming of Marley Close, off Seven Acres Road.

No suggested origin of the word Mawdy has been found.

This is the name given to the ridge extending southeast from Chalbury, and also to the small copse on the side of Chalbury; it also gives its name to Rimbrow Close off Puddledock Lane and to Rymbury off Seven Acres Road. Rimbury seems to be quite a recent version of the name, which started out (1435) as Trimbury but was then Rimbrow in most documents, and is still used in Ordnance Survey maps. It is not clear why the version Rimbury came to be in common use, unless the suffix was changed inadvertently to match Chalbury.

Some time in the 19thC, a bronze-age urnfield was found at Rimbury; the name Deverel-Rimbury is sometimes given to this pottery type, although the original theory that this represented an incursion of a Continental culture is now thoroughly discredited.

From the documentary evidence, it seems that Sutton Farm, as a distinct farming unit, is fairly recent compared with other farms in the Parish. The first reference is in 1781, when a farm of nearly 900 acres, then called West Farm, was leased to Thomas Willis. Quite soon after, it was being called Home Farm, and later still changed its name to Sutton Farm. It was tenanted by Robert and Thomas Scutt from about 1829 until 1849; the next tenant was John Allen Pope, two of whose sons later bought into the Dorchester brewery now called Eldridge Pope. John Allen Pope at one time farmed the astonishing area of 1950 acres, a large fraction of the Parish.

At that time, a grand farmhouse, with a lake, was built, and Puddledock Lane was diverted from the north side of the farmhouse to the south. The farm buildings were in the area now occupied by Brookmead Close.

Farming ended at Sutton Farm in about 1980; although a new house, called Sutton Farm, was built in 1996 further along Puddledock Lane, this never had very much relationship with the land and any legal agricultural tie has now been removed.

The earliest reference to a Mill in Sutton Poyntz is in 1273, but this could refer to any of the three Mills on the River Jordan (the Upper Mill in the Waterworks site, Sutton Mill, or Preston Mill). In a 1435 document, two Mills are described, a grain mill and an out-of-use fulling mill; again it cannot be deduced which two Mills these are. A 1750 document specifically states that there are three Mills in the Parish.

The earliest specific mention of Sutton Mill by name is in 1647. This would have been the old Mill, which stood until the present Mill was built and commissioned, in 1815. This old Mill is shown in the c1800 Weld Estate Survey map, and was a rather smaller building, at roughly the same location but on the west bank of the Jordan rather than straddling the river. No illustrations of the old Mill seem to exist, and whether Thomas Hardy had any knowledge of the layout or look of the building when he wrote "Trumpet Major" is not known, but it is this old Mill that would have existed at the time Hardy was writing about, not the present Mill.

Sutton means "South farmstead" or settlement. The first known reference is AD 891, in a Saxon deed whereby King Alfred became owner of the manor. It is possible that South referred to its location relative to Dorchester.

The Poyntz family of Curry Mallet owned Sutton Poyntz manor (which included most of the parish of Preston cum Sutton Poyntz) for about 150 years between c.1212 and 1361. Plain Sutton gradually became Sutton Poyntz (perhaps to distinguish it from other Sutton's); the first reference I have found is in 1314, and it took another 100 years for the name to stick.

Initially, the name Poyntz seems to have been spelled generally with a "y", but from the mid-17th C, the spelling changed to Pointz, before flipping back in the mid-19th C (perhaps to align it with the spelling used by the Poyntz family).